FT MEADE 


D 570 
. A35 
1917 
Copy 3 


Proclamation 



by the 

President 

to the 

People 

t4s. 

' V COU 


My Fellow-Countrymen : Urt^' 

The entrance of our own beloved country 
into the grim and terrible war for democracy 
and human rights which has shaken the 
world creates so many problems of national 
life and action which call for immediate 
consideration and settlement that I hope you 
will permit me to address to you a few words 
of earnest counsel and appeal with regard to 
them. 

We are rapidly putting our navy upon an 
effective war footing and are about to create 
and equip a great army, but these are the 
simplest parts of the great task to which we 
have addressed ourselves. There is not a 
single selfish element, so far as I can see, in 
the cause we are fighting for. We are fight- 
ing for what we believe and wish to be the 
rights of mankind and for the future peace 
and security of the world. To do this great 
thing worthily and successfully we must 
devote ourselves to the service without re- 
gard to profit or material advantage and 
with an energy and intelligence that will 
rise to the level of the enterprise itself. We 
must realize to the full how great the task 
is and how many things, how many kinds 
and elements of capacity and service and 
self-sacrifice it involves. 

These, then, are the things we must do, 
and do well, besides fighting — the things 
without which mere fighting would be fruit- 
less : 

We must supply abundant food for our- 
selves and for our armies and our seamen, 
not only, but also for a large part of the 
nations with whom we have now made 
common cause, in whose support and by 
whose sides we shall be fighting. 

We must supply ships by the hundreds out 
of our shipyards to carry to the other side of 
the sea, submarines or no submarines, what 
will every day be needed there, and abundant 
materials out of our fields and our mines and 
our factories with which not only to clothe 
and equip our own forces on land and sea, but 



also to clothe and support our people, for 
whom the gallant fellows under arms can no 
longer w T ork; to help clothe and equip the 
armies with which we are co-operating in 
Europe, and to keep the looms and manu- 
factories there in raw material; coal to keep 
the fires going in ships at sea and in the fur- 
naces of hundreds of factories across the sea; 
steel out of which to make arms and am- 
munition both here and there; rails for worn- 
out railways back of the fighting fronts; lo- 
comotives and rolling stock to take the place 
of those every day going to pieces; mules, 
horses, cattle for labor and for military 
service; everything with which the people 
of England and France and Italy and 
Russia have usually supplied themselves, 
but cannot now afford the men, the materials, 
or the machinery to make. 

It is evident to every thinking man that 
our industries, on the farms, in the ship- 
yards, in the mines, in the factories, must be 
made more prolific and more efficient than 
ever, and that they must be more econom- 
ically managed and better adapted to the 
particular requirements of our task than they 
have been; and what I want to say is that 
the men and the women who devote their 
thought and their energy to these things will 
be serving the country and conducting the 
fight for peace and freedom just as truly and 
just as effectively as the men on the battle- 
field or in the trenches. The industrial 
forces of the country, men and women alike, 
will be a great national, a great international 
service army — a notable and honored host 
engaged in the service of the nation and the 
world, the efficient friends and saviors of 
free men everywhere. Thousands, nay 
hundreds of thousands, of men otherwise 
liable to military service will of right and of 
necessity be excused from that service and 
assigned to the fundamental, sustaining work 
of the fields and factories and mines, and 
they will be as much part of the great patriotic 
forces of the nation as the men under fire. 



I take the liberty, therefore, of addressing 
this word to the farmers of the country and 
to all who work on the farms : The supreme 
need of our own nation and of the nations 
with which we are co-operating is an abun- 
dance of supplies, and especially of food- 
stuffs. The importance of an adequate 
food supply, especially for the present year, 
is superlative. Without abundant food, 
alike for the armies and the peoples now at 
war, the whole great enterprise upon which 
we have embarked will break down and fail. 
The world’s food reserves are low. Not only 
during the present emergency, but for 
some time after peace shall have come, both 
our own people and a large proportion of the 
people of Europe must rely upon the harvests 
in America. 

Upon the farmers of this country, there- 
fore, in large measure rests the fate of the 
war and the fate of the nations. May the 
nation not count upon them to omit no step 
that will increase the production of their 
land or that will bring about the most 
effectual co-operation in the sale and dis- 
tribution of their products? The time is 
short. It is of the most imperative im- 
portance that everything possible be done, 
and done immediately, to make sure of 
large harvests. I call upon young men and 
old alike and upon the ablebodied boys of 
the land to accept and act upon this duty — 
to turn in hosts to the farms and make 
certain that no pains and no labor is lacking 
in this great matter. 

I particularly appeal to the farmers of the 
South to plant abundant foodstuffs, as well 
as cotton. They can show their patriotism 
in no better or more convincing way than by 
resisting the great temptation of the present 
price of cotton and helping, helping upon a 
great scale, to feed the nation and the 
peoples everywhere who are fighting for 
their liberties and for our own. The variety 
of their crops will be the visible measure of 
their comprehension of their national duty. 


The Government of the United States 
and the Governments of the several States 
stand ready to co-operate. They will do 
everything possible to assist farmers in 
securing an adequate supply of seed, an 
adequate force of laborers when they are 
most needed, at harvest time, and the 
means of expediting shipments of fertilizers 
and farm machinery, as well as of the crops 
themselves when harvested. The course of 
trade shall be as unhampered as it is pos- 
sible to make it, and there shall be no un- 
warranted manipulation of the nation’s 
food supply by those who handle it on its 
way to the consumer. This is our oppor- 
tunity to demonstrate the efficiency of a 
great democracy, and we shall not fall short 
of it! 

This let me say to the middlemen of every 
sort, whether they are handling our food- 
stuffs or our raw materials of manufacture 
or the products of our mills and factories: 
The eyes of the country will be especially 
upon you. This is your opportunity for signal 
service, efficient and disinterested. The 
country expects you, as it expects all others, 
to forego unusual profits, to organize and 
expedite shipments of supplies of every kind, 
but especially of food, with an eye to the 
service you are rendering and in the spirit of 
those who enlist in the ranks, for their people, 
not for themselves. I shall confidently 
expect you to deserve and win the confidence 
of people of every sort and station. 

To the men who run the railways of the 
country, whether they be managers or oper- 
ative employes, let me say that the railways 
are the arteries of the nation’s life and that 
upon them rests the immense responsibility 
of seeing to it that those arteries suffer no 
obstruction of any kind, no inefficiency or 
slackened power. To the merchant let me 
suggest the motto, “ Small profits and quick 
service,” and to the shipbuilder the thought 
that the life of the war depends upon him. 
The food and the war supplies must be 



carried across the seas, no matter how many 
ships are sent to the bottom. The places of 
those that go down must be supplied, and 
supplied at once. To the miner let me say 
that he stands where the farmer does: the 
work of the world waits on him. If he 
slackens or fails, armies and statesmen are 
helpless. He also is enlisted in the great 
Service Army. The manufacturer does not 
need to be told, I hope, that the nation looks 
to him to speed and perfect every process; 
and I want only to remind his employes that 
their service is absolutely indispensable and 
is counted on by every man who loves the 
country and its liberties. 

Let me suggest, also, that every one who 
creates or cultivates a garden helps, and 
helps greatly, to solve the problem of the 
feeding of the nations; and that every 
housewife who practices strict economy puts 
herself in the ranks of those who serve the 
nation. This is the time for America to 
correct her unpardonable fault of wasteful- 
ness and extravagance. Let every man and 
every woman assume the duty of careful, 
provident use and expenditure as a public 
duty, as a dictate of patriotism which no 
one can now expect ever to be excused or 
forgiven for ignoring. 

In the hope that this statement of the 
needs of the nation and of the world in this 
hour of supreme crisis may stimulate those 
to whom it comes and remind all who need 
reminder of the solemn duties of a time such 
as the world has never seen before, I beg 
that all editors and publishers everywhere 
will give as prominent publication and as 
wide circulation as possible to this appeal. 
I venture to suggest, also, to all advertising 
agencies that they would perhaps render a 
very substantial and timely service to the 
country if they would give it widespread 
repetition. And I hope that clergymen will 
not think the theme of it an unworthy or in- 
appropriate subject of comment and homily 
from their pulpits. 



The supreme test of the nation has come. 
We must all speak, act, and serve together! 

WOODROW WILSON. 





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